the Matriarch
First appears in Chapter I
An old woman in San Juan with the particular quiet of somebody who has never once needed to walk fast to be taken seriously. She holds a clay cup, steam rising off it in a thin unbothered spiral, and offers it to Sals without a word of greeting. Age has not slowed her so much as concentrated her. She is the first person in the book to treat what is happening to Sals as unremarkable, which is both a relief and the most alarming thing anybody has said to him. She gives almost no instruction. Read what she does give carefully — it is short, and every word of it is load-bearing.
No card. No account. Nothing to type.
Also in The World